Blessing

Sitting in an office working on files all day isn't my idea of fun, but there are times when it is necessary here at World Relief.

Stephanie Gibson holds a Congolese 1-year-old girl named Blessing.

In the midst of it all, sometimes I forget that there are real people behind all this red tape. People behind all the food stamp and housing applications. People behind all the problems. People who just want someone to help. People who need love.

I love kids, especially the refugee kids here. There's just something about their innocent and inquisitive souls that fascinates me. Most of my favorite kids are too young to remember or to have experienced things too harsh for me to think about. They and their parents have been victims of violence Americans pretend to know nothing about. We try to ignore it because it is not comfortable. We try to ignore it because we think we can do nothing to help.

We forget that there are real people involved in the violence—in civil wars where people are turned against their neighbors and children are turned into murderous soldiers even before they turn 15. It's really tough to think about—especially when I see precious children like Blessing who, thank God, was saved from the violence in her home country. She is so young that she will only know the life of her family here in America. I'm grateful for that. But what do we do about the people who are left—those children who don't have the same chance and have to grow up in extremely dangerous areas around the world? What do we do?

Stephanie Gibson, a student at West Texas A&M, serves as a Go Now missionary with World Relief, a refugee resettlement ministry in Fort Worth.